A bloody war and a sickly season. The remarkable career
of Admiral Sir Charles Edmund Kingsmill, RN1
W.A.B. Douglas
L’amiral Sir Charles Kingsmill, RN, a servi dans la Marine nationale de
1869 à 1920, un demi-siècle pendant lequel la Royal Navy a subi une
révolution navale, la Marine royale canadienne a vu le jour, et la
Première Guerre mondiale a été menée. En 1908, le premier ministre
Laurier a invité Kingsmill à former un service naval à partir du
ministère de la Marine et des Pêcheries. Kingsmill l’a accompli, et a
réussi à survivre les difficultés engendrées par le défait de Laurier, à
l’élection de 1911, par les conservateurs de Borden. Démuni de
ressources au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale, et face à la
catastrophe de l’explosion de Halifax en 1917, il a bricolé une défense
navale suffisante pour répondre à la menace des sous-marins contre les
convois dans l’Atlantique ouest. Reconnu pour ses services par
l’Amirauté et par le gouvernement canadien, il a été anobli en 1918,
mais lorsque tout effort pour mener à bien une expansion navale
modeste après la guerre ont échoué, il a démissionné en 1920.
“The children of empire deserved a vision and have been given horse blinkers.”
D.M. Schurman, Imperial Defence, 1868-1887, edited by John Beeler (London:
Frank Cass, 2000), author’s introduction, p.1.
In 1908 the city of Quebec celebrated its 300 th birthday. Among the dignitaries
1
This paper reflects the work of many others, especially Mike Kingsmill, of Brechin Ontario,
who has given me access to papers and illustrations left to him by his grandfather Admiral
Kingsmill and his father Charles Kingsmill, of Patti Kingsmill, who has given me access to
similar material, of Dr Richard Gimblett, the Maritime Command historian of the Royal
Canadian Navy, who first began research on Kingsmill and the origins of the Royal Canadian
Navy in his master’s thesis “‘Tin-Pots’ or Dreadnoughts? The Evolution of the Naval Policy
of the Laurier Administration, 1896-1911” for Trent University in 1981, of Michael Hadley
and Roger Sarty who built on this foundation with their Tin Pots and Pirate Ships: Canadian
Naval Forces and German Sea Raiders, 1880-1918 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 1991), and of the official histories team led by Bill Johnston which
produced The Seabound Coast: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Navy, 18671939, Volume I (Toronto: Dundurn, in cooperation with the Department of National Defence,
2010).
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord XXIV, No. 1 (January 2014), 41-63
42
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
present – along with the Prince of Wales (the future King George V), and a squadron of
the Royal Navy – was Sir Julian Corbett who, just having published his celebrated history
of England and the Seven Years War, was an authority on the siege and capture of Quebec
in 1759. Because he was also a trusted authority on contemporary naval matters, the
Admiralty’s director of naval intelligence (DNI) wanted him “to determine, quietly, see
what military ... (especially naval) contributions Canada was prepared to make to the
defence of the Empire as a whole.”2
The governor-general, (Lord Grey), General Sir Percy Lake, the British officer
commanding the militia in Canada, and Rear-Admiral Charles Edmund Kingsmill, RN, in
charge of the marine service of the Canadian marine and fisheries department, all spoke
with Corbett. None of these gentlemen seemed to be in total agreement about Canadian
capabilities and intentions, but as Captain Edmund Slade (DNI) observed in his report
“Canada is a part of the Empire, and however bad they may be it would be the most fatal
policy on our part to even hint that in time of danger we would abandon any part of it.” 3
Donald Schurman, in his biography of Corbett, caught a revealing glimpse of
Admiral Kingsmill who, in a long conversation:
was very pessimistic ... (The) reservoir of, and facilities for, turning out competent
officers were limited, and unhappily they were only available from the Lower Deck.
There was a “total absence of any sense of discipline”, and he supposed this
impossible to inculcate without a fixed service system. The other discouraging
feature was the prevalence of political patronage that was bound to frustrate the
sound building of an officer corps. Concretely, he proposed introducing some
permanence into the service, employing personnel for at least a three year period, and
taking the climate into consideration by employing the hands in the dockyard in the
winter. But he was clearly not hopeful and “seemed to feel all this (was) only a poor
substitute for money contributions to the Royal Navy.”4
2
3
4
Captain Edmund Slade specified that this enquiry was to be made “as a service to Sir John
Fisher”, the First Sea Lord. Donald M. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett 1854-1922 (London:
Royal Historical Society, 1981), 99. The relations between Slade and Fisher at this time have
given rise to some discussion. Nicholas Lambert, in a hostile review of J.J. Widen’s Theorist
of Maritime Strategy: Sir Julian Corbett and his Contributions to Military and Naval
Thought (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012) argues that Slade and Fisher “clashed from
virtually the first day”, but this does not accord with Schurman’s assessment of Corbett and
Slade. See Lambert, “False Prophet?: The Maritime Theory of Julian Corbett and
Professional Military Education,” The Journal of Military History vol. 77, no.3 (July 2013),
1055-1078. Lambert acknowledges Schurman’s unsurpassed understanding of Corbett, but
suggests more recent scholarship has superceded Schurman. See also Nicholas Lambert,
Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 173177.
Schurman, Corbett, 111-2.
Ibid., 109; cf. Michael Whitby, “A Distance Beyond Geography: Canada and The Naval
Review” in Peter Hore, ed., Dreadnought to Daring: 100 Years of Comment, Controversy
and Debate in the Naval Review (Barnsley, U.K.: Seaforth, 2012) for British naval views on
an autonomous Canadian navy, especially “Future of the Royal Canadian Navy,” no. 3
A bloody war and a sickly season.
43
It was only two months since Kingsmill had received his promotion to rearadmiral, and accepted retirement from active service in the Royal Navy, in order to take
up command of the Canadian government marine service, which included the patrol craft
of the Fisheries Protection Service, and a fleet of lighthouse supply vessels, buoy tenders,
icebreakers, and hydrographic survey ships. 5 Although Canadian by birth, his thirty-nine
years in the Royal Navy, and the knowledge he had of Corbett’s views on naval matters, 6
was likely to have influenced what he had to say. He must have known also that Corbett
would report back to the Admiralty, and that the first sea lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher
(with whom, as will be seen, Kingsmill may have been somewhat out of favour), would
probably not have disagreed with his comments on the state of naval readiness in Canada.
The first sea Lord needed to be on side, or at least in sympathy with him, if Kingsmill
was to succeed in establishing the Canadian naval service decided upon by Sir Wilfrid
Laurier and the minister of marine and fisheries, Louis-Philippe Brodeur.
Over the next two years, working with the deputy minister of the marine and
fisheries department, Georges Desbarats, Kingsmill managed to create a new Department
of the Naval Service, which took over some parts of the marine and fisheries department,
and establish the Naval Service of Canada. On 4 May 1910 Parliament passed the Naval
Service Act, on 4 August the Apollo class cruiser Rainbow was commissioned into the
RCN, the Diadem class cruiser Niobe joined the service on 16 September, and in October
the Royal Naval College of Canada opened in Halifax. On 21 October (an auspicious
naval date that marks Horatio Nelson’s defeat of the combined French and Spanish fleet
in 1805), Niobe arrived in Halifax, and in November Rainbow arrived in Victoria, British
Columbia. Nearly a year later, on 29 August 1911, the naval service, with royal assent,
became the Royal Canadian Navy. 7 This was perhaps the high point of Kingsmill’s
service in Canada. It is true that during ten subsequent and turbulent years in office he
advanced to the rank of admiral (retired) in the Royal Navy, and in recognition of his war
services from 1914-18 received a knighthood on the recommendations of both British
naval authorities and the Canadian government. 8 On the other hand, when he retired in
1920 it was because Prime Minister Robert Borden’s Conservative Party caucus (possibly
influenced by contradictory advice received from RN advisers over the previous six
5
6
7
8
(1915), 369, unsigned by Lieutenant-Commander H. B. Pilcher.
He was given six months to decide whether to take up the Canadian appointment, or return to
active service in the RN; Kew, United Kingdom, The National Archives (hereafter, TNA),
ADM 196/38. See also Charles D. Maginley and Bernard Collin, The Ships of Canada’s
Marine Services (St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell, 2001).
He had attended Corbett’s lectures at the Naval College in Greenwich during the last four
months of 1905, TNA, ADM 196/38.
Gilbert Norman Tucker, The Naval Service of Canada, Volume I: Origins and Early Years
(Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1952), 137; Desbarats to Undersecretary of State for External
Affairs, 30 January 1911, Secretary to Governor-General, 16 August 1911: “His Majesty
having been graciously pleased to authorize that the Canadian Naval Force shall be
designated the ‘Royal Canadian Navy,’ this title is to be officially adopted, the abbreviation
thereof being ‘RCN’”, Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 182.
TNA, ADM 196/38, p.755.
44
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
years) had rejected every policy Kingsmill had put forward since the end of hostilities.
As a final blow, the government decided in 1922 to close the naval college he had
established in 1910. It was not until the eve of the Second World War, mainly thanks to
his successor as director of the naval service and chief of naval staff Commodore Walter
Hose, RCN, that the measures he had proposed in 1920 finally began to receive
government approval. Kingsmill did not live to see the significant expansion, from six to
some 450 ships, that took place after his death in 1935. 9 Nevertheless, he is recognized
as the “father” of the Royal Canadian Navy. 10
Kingsmill’s career until 1908 had been an epitome of mid- and late-Victorian
developments in the Royal Navy. 11 It was remarkable because, as a colonial with no
high-ranking sponsors – he was never in the so-called “Fishpond” that marked the
influence of Jacky Fisher on naval appointments before the First World War, nor was he a
member of the elite in British society who “took considerable pride in being ‘above’ the
ordinary,”12 and on only two occasions had he won special recognition 13 – he managed to
do unusually well, and evidently established himself with some influential patrons, in a
service where colonials were usually at a disadvantage. By 1891 he had won some
important recognition in Canada as well.14
Precisely what lay behind Charles Kingsmill’s entry into the Royal Navy cannot
be documented. From the time that Charles’ grandfather, William Kingsmill, had settled
in the country, the Kingsmill family had been prominent in the political and military life
9
10
11
12
13
14
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, chapters 15 and 16. The destroyers Vancouver,
Champlain, Skeena, and Saguenay, the sail training vessel Venture and the Battle Class
trawler Armentieres were the only ships in commission at the time of Kingsmill’s death, Ken
Macpherson and Ron Barrie, Ships of Canada’s Naval Forces, 1910-2002, 3rd edition (St.
Catharines: Vanwell, 2002), 9-34.
“If any individual in the Department of the Naval Service can lay claim to Tucker’s assertion
of having ‘more to do with the moulding of the service than any other man’ that guiding hand
... clearly belonged to Kingsmill.” Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 163; see Tucker, vol.
I, 151, which gave the credit to Georges Desbarats.
Prior to the knighthood he received in 1918, Kingsmill had been awarded the African
General Service Medal (bar Somaliland 1902-1904), Egypt Medal (1884-1885), Khedive’s
Star for service in Egypt, Grand Officer, Order of the Crown of Italy, Officer, Legion of
Honour (France) (1906) . See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kingsmill, Medals of
Admiral Sir Charles Edmund Kingsmill, Kt.
Robert L. Davison, The Challenges of Command: The Royal Navy’s Executive Branch
Officers 1880-1919 (London: Ashgate, 1911), 61; Nicholas Rodger, “Officers, Gentlemen
and their Education, 1793-1860”, in E. Freeman, ed., Les empires en guerre et paix:
Journées Franco-Anglaises d’histoire de la Marine, Portsmouth 23-26 Mars 1988
(Vincennes: Service historique de la marine, 1990).
See notes 25 AND 31, below, TNA, ADM 196/38.
J. Hampden Burnham, Canadians in the Imperial Naval and Military Service (Toronto,
1891). Kingsmill is given a full page in this book, compared to the one or two lines devoted
to his Canadian contemporaries in the navy.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
45
of Upper Canada.15 The family had connections in Britain that may have helped his
candidacy for a cadet training establishment in England, but one is led to wonder why,
when prospects appeared so favourable in Canada, Charles embarked on a life that would
be far removed from the world he had been born into.
Certain events of his early life suggest how this happened. When he was five
years old his mother, Ellen Diana Grange Kingsmill, was killed in a tragic sleighing
accident, and his father subsequently remarried, three more times, 16 which no doubt had a
bearing on the boy’s future. When old enough, he went to Upper Canada College, the
most prestigious school in the province, as his father had done before him, but only
15
16
His father was a prominent lawyer and businessman in Upper Canada, Crown Attorney of
Wellington Country at the time of Charles’ birth. See “John Juchereau Kingsmill,”Henry J.
Morgan, The Canadian Men and Women of the Time (Toronto: William Briggs, 1898).
Family trees indicate that the Kilkenny branch of the Kingsmill family had its origins in
England during the twelfth century, and Ireland in the sixteenth century, and that Charles
Kingsmill’s father, John Juchereau, born in Quebec 21 May 1829, the seventh of Captain
William Kingsmill’s nine children, was the first to be born in Canada. Captain Kingsmill
(1793-1876) served in the 66th Regiment of Foot from 1815 to 1834, in the Peninsular
campaign, on the Island of St. Helena overseeing the exile of Napoleon until his death in
1821, in Ireland, and, from 1827 to 1834, in the Canadas. He may have been encouraged to
sell out by Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne, who had been his commanding officer in
the Peninsular campaign. Family records state “He was appointed by Sir John Colborne,
afterwards Lord Seaton, the then Governor of Upper Canada, and under whom he had served
in the War, to an office under the Provincial government, he was [according to Kingsmill’s
eldest daughter, Helena Maria Grange, mother of Lavinia Maude Grange] private secretary to
Colborne, and continued there until an order was received from Sir Francis Bond Head
directing him to proceed to Toronto with all the men he could muster to assist in the
suppression of the rebellion … in 1837... He raised, organized, drilled and brought into the
field three regiments in succession, the discipline of which was approved of in a marked
manner by the Commander of the Forces of the Niagara Frontier.” With the rank of
lieutenant-colonel he commanded the 3rd Incorporated Militia of Upper Canada until
appointed by Sir George Arthur to the shrievalty of the Niagara District, continuing in that
office for twenty one years, He then “accepted the Post Mastership of Guelph, which office
he held at the time of his death,” Lavinia Maude Grange, “Memorandum respecting the Life
of Lieut-Colonel William Kingsmill, compiled by his Grand-daughter L.M.G. Kingsmill,
corrected and updated copy, privately published, 1906.” F.H. Armstrong, Upper Canadian
Chronology and Territorial Legislation (London, ON: University of Western Ontario
Centennial publication, 1967), 181 confirms the appointment as sheriff of the Niagara
District in 1840.
Letter from Woodlawn Park cemetery to Patti Kingsmill. Just before burial the body
apparently moved, resulting in delay of the ceremony until it was quite certain that the lady
had in fact deceased, Elora Observer, February 1860. See also Henry J. Morgan, The
Canadian Men and Women of Our Time, 2nd ed. (Toronto: William Briggs, 1912), “John
Juchereau Kingsmill,” who had two children by Ellen Diana Grange, four by Julia Dickson
(one of whom died in infancy), whom he married in 1861, three by Caroline Stokes, whom
he married in 1871 and three by Grace Bernard, whom he married in 1881.
46
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
stayed there for a year.17 In 1867, following the pattern of military service that so many
among his close family and friends had performed, he went to a school in Brockville,
Ontario run by Dr. Frederick W. Barron, a former headmaster of Upper Canada College,
as a “crammer” for prospective candidates wishing to enter British officer training
establishments.18 On 24 September 1869, sponsored (as were all Canadian candidates)
by the governor-general of Canada, he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet, and on 21 June
1871 was promoted Midshipman. This was the beginning of a varied and successful
naval career.19 He acquired skills in seamanship subject to the exacting standards of the
Victorian navy, and while serving in the Royal Yacht was promoted Lieutenant on 5
September 1877.20 Selected in 1879 to qualify as a torpedo lieutenant at the Royal
Navy’s new torpedo school, HMS Vernon,21 he did not qualify, and was denied
permission to sit the exams a second time, but still received a favourable assessment from
the school.22 He went on to serve from 1881 to 1885 as senior Lieutenant in a newly
17
18
19
20
21
22
The school, founded in 1829 by Sir John Colborne, William Kingsmill’s former commanding
officer during the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic wars, provided a firm grounding
for university and the professions. John Juchereau Kingsmill, who had attended UCC
himself, served on the Board of the school. He went on to graduate in law from Osgoode
Hall, Kingsmill papers, family tree, St. Mark’s Church, Niagara-on-the Lake.
C.B. Koester, “Charles Edmund Kingsmill (1855-1935) Genealogical Sketch,” 9 March
1992, Ottawa, National Defence Headquarters, Directorate of History and Heritage (hereafter
DHH), biographical file “C.E. Kingsmill”; Richard H. Gimblett, “Admiral Sir Charles E.
Kingsmill: Forgotten Father,” in Michael Whitby, Richard H. Gimblett and Peter Haydon,
The Admirals: Canada’s Senior Naval Leadership in the Twentieth Century (Toronto:
Dundurn, 2006). Gimblett observes that Dr. Barron’s son would become an active advocate
for a Canadian navy and that his grandson J.A. Barron would be the first cadet to join CGS
Canada, in the period leading up to the formation of a Canadian navy in 1910. See also
Burnham, Canadians in the Imperial Naval and Military Service Abroad. Until the end of
the Second World War there were still Canadians, some of them graduates of the Royal
Military College, who served in the British in preference to Canadian armed forces.
Published recollections of naval officers who were not among the elite in the nineteenth
century are difficult to find. For a junior officer’s view of the service Autobiography of
Montagu Burrows, Captain RN (London: Macmillan, 1908), although it predates Kingsmill
by a full generation, is an illuminating picture of life in the early Victorian navy, which was
doing much the same thing in Burrows’ day as it was when Kingsmill was serving in
gunboats between 1869 and 1892.
At HMS Britannia in 1870 he received a first class in seamanship, second class in “study,”
TNA, ADM 196/ 353; on 18 April 1877 he received a third class certificate and stood second
in a class of nine for the lieutenant’s exam, National Maritime Museum Greenwich,
Manuscript department.
Ibid. The torpedo training school was still in its infancy, and there was only a handful of
qualified officers in the RN, John B. Hattendorf et al., British Naval Documents 1204-1960
(Aldershot: Scolar Press for the Navy Record Society, 1993), 697, 723-5.
“Failed qualifying course for torpedo Lt but worked well, steadily & has very good
knowledge of torpedo work which I hope he may have an opportunity of using for the good
of the service,” TNA, ADM 196/38.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
47
commissioned composite sail and steam gunboat, HMS Arab,23 on the East Indies station.
As Anthony Preston and John Major have observed, “When the steam gunboat
came on the scene the Navy was already accustomed to acting as a world police force.” 24
In August of 1884, Arab joined the naval forces sent to Suakin to support the doomed
Gordon Relief expedition to Khartoum. 25 Although not directly involved in the land
operations, Kingsmill (as the secretary of the admiralty noted on his service record)
“Acted as beachmaster at Aden and while so employed was appointed by the CinC at the
request of HM Consul for the Somali Coast as Vice Consul at Zeila: approved as a
temporary measure.”26 Not for the last time, he was profiting from what naval officers,
proposing the toast for Thursday night dinners, call “a bloody war and a sickly season.”
Seizing such an opportunity so early in his career probably did him no harm,
especially when, almost as soon as Arab returned to England in May 1885, he received a
glowing assessment from his captain. 27 Recommended for another gunboat, he joined
HMS Cormorant, a six-gun screw sloop launched at Chatham in 1877, and went off on
another long overseas commission, this time to the Pacific. Cormorant had attracted
considerable attention from a somewhat bloody episode during her first commission; she
had certainly been acting as “part of a world police force.” 28 If such activities marked her
23
24
25
26
27
28
The tenth Arab was a four-gun screw gunboat, launched at Glasgow in 1874. She was of 720
tons, 660 horsepower, and 10.4 knots speed. Her length, beam, and draught were 150 ft, 28
ft, and 14 ft, http://www.worldnavalships.com/r_n_gunboats.htm.
Anthony Preston and John Major, Send a Gunboat: A Study of the Gunboat and its Role in
British Policy, 1854-1904 (London: Longmans.1967), 7.
The Gladstone government had reluctantly authorised the so-called Gordon relief expedition
under Garnet Wolseley to lift the siege of Khartoum, and Suakin was the port in eastern
Sudan from which supplies were to be sent to Wolseley’s force on the Nile. Winston
Churchill, The River War (London, 1892); Julian Symons, England’s Pride (London, 1965),
Preston and Major, Send a Gunboat, 138-40; Sir William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy
(London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1897-1903), vol. VII, 350-389.
TNA, ADM 196/33, p. 752; see also ArchNet digital library; L.P. Walsh, Under the Flag and
Somali Coast Stories (London, 1900): “Since 1880 the British Acting First Assistant Resident
in Aden, Captain Frederick Mercer Hunter... selected the Aden Second Assistant Resident,
Langton Prendergast Walsh, who was a former Commander of the Aden Settlement Police to
be a Vice-Consul and the British local commander in Somaliland. Walsh was given an
appointment in Somaliland as the representative of His Highness the Khedive of Egypt.
Hunter installed Walsh and his 40 Aden policemen in Berbera. Zeila, still being a Turkish
Pashalic (an area governed by a Pasha of Turkey) was treated separately as a British Agency,
and another “British officer [presumably this refers to Lieutenant Kingsmill] was posted
there...”
Form S206, a standard performance assessment known in the navy as a “flimsy”, held among
others in the Kingsmill papers at Brechin. Ontario.
“In 1879 a boat’s crew in the New Hebrides, belonging to the British trader ‘Mystery’ had been
massacred. The ‘Cormorant,’ ... one of five ships, under Commodore John Crawford Wilson
proceeded to the islands on a punitive expedition and inflicted severe punishment on the
natives,” http://www.worldnavalships.com/naval_sloops_.htm; Preston and Major, Send a
Gunboat, 7. The Illustrated London News published an illustration of Cormorant at the time.
48
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
second commission in the Pacific
they did not attract comparable
attention, but her presence in that
theatre was representative of
another development, the first
tentative
signs
of
interdepartmental co-operation
between the army and the navy
in imperial defence.
The
Defence Committee, established
in 1878, had begun “to make the
empire-wide, that is to say the
‘imperial’ nature of modern
British defence, clear and of
immediate importance.”29
Illustration 1: Engine Room crew, HMS Cormorant;
Kingsmill seated, middle of front row.
Circumstances during this commission favoured his career prospects in a
remarkable fashion, taking advantage of a sickly season, if not this time of a bloody war.
On the homeward passage his captain, Commander Jasper E.T. Nicholls, died of yellow
fever. Kingsmill assumed command off Rio de Janeiro, and sailed the ship to Gibraltar.
There the ship received “a very satisfactory report of inspection by Captain
Buckle...Satisfaction of My Lords expressed to Lieut Kingsmill.” 30 He left Cormorant in
Gibraltar, where she would soon be paid off, sailed to England, took 58 days foreign
service leave and on 20 February 1890 assumed command of the newly commissioned
gunboat HMS Goldfinch with the acting rank of commander. 31
Goldfinch was sent to the Australian station. 32 The ship touched a coral head in
the Great Barrier Reef, on passage to Cooktown in Queensland, Australia, and he was
“warned to be more careful,” but he still received a satisfactory assessment. His
29
30
31
32
Donald M. Schurman, Imperial Defence 1868-1887 (ed John Beeler, London: Frank Cass,
2000), 55, 63, 71, 158.
The second classic example in his career of the British naval toast, TNA, ADM 196/38,
p.752. The inspecting officer was Captain C.E. Buckle RN, senior officer in Gibraltar.
TNA, ADM 196/38, p.752. A member of the lower deck in Cormorant wrote to him: “On
behalf of hands you left behind I have written to tell you that at last we have made shift
towards going(?) home we were transferred here last Saturday evening before leaving the old
Cormorant the senior officer informed us through Captain Chapman that he was very much
pleased with the way we had conducted ourselves after you had left. We trust you had a
pleasant passage & that you arrived home safe. The Sultan arrived yesterday being(?)
escorted by the Temeraire and we expect to leave here with her tomorrow. They are keeping
us well at Gib on board here & we are now holystoning their decks for them. This is about
all we [can] tell you so will close hoping that you will receive yr promotion get a good ship
& spend as happy a commission as we have all done in the Old Cormorant. This is the
sincere wish of the Unfortunate 19, from yrs respectfully G. Ralph,” Kingsmill papers,
Brechin, Ontario.
TNA, ADM 196/38, p.752; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Station.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
49
promotion to commander was confirmed, at the age of 36, on 30 June 1891. 33 It is
indicative of service customs in 1891 that Kingsmill now felt at liberty to turn over
command to his senior lieutenant and take several months leave. He landed on the island
of Noumea, and eventually arrived in Toronto, Canada, travelling by way of Hawaii and
California.34 As Robert Davison has suggested, “The very structure of the service helped
to foster the illusion of officers being independent of the government that employed
them.”35
The first real opportunity to see his father and his siblings since leaving home at
the age of thirteen, this visit to Toronto was of considerable significance to his future life
and career. The Kingsmills, particularly his father and uncle, had widened their circle of
family friends and acquaintances, among whom the Beardmore family of Toronto were
prominent.36 Nicol Kingsmill, Charles’ uncle, had strong imperialist leanings, and would
become an active member of the Navy League of Canada after it was formed in 1895,
and was providing certain legal services to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who would be prime
33
34
35
36
TNA, ADM 53/13772, 19 August, 1890; Rear-Admiral Lord Charles Thomas Douglas
Montague Scott who was then C-in-C of the Australian station had recommended him for
advancement in January 1891, and although in April of that year he seems to have expressed
some reservations: (“a hardworking and loyal officer but command is not quite his
metier...”), his promotion went through. The Admiralty noted his proficiency in the French
language and his “slight Arabic”. ADM 196/38 loc.cit. He was in good company. John
Rushworth Jellicoe, four years younger than Kingsmill, was promoted on the same day, in
Jellicoe’s case “through Captain Fisher’s good offices,” Admiral Sir R.H. Bacon, The Life of
John Rushworth, Earl Jellicoe (London: Cassell, 1936), 59.
In Honolulu, according to his family papers, he visited the Hawaiian princess Kauilani.
Seventeen years old in 1892, she would die at the age of twenty-four in 1899. The
photographs in the Kingsmill collection include one which is autographed and dated 16
February 1892, evidence that she knew Kingsmill at a time when American businessmen and
politicians were preparing to replace the Hawaiian monarchy with a new constitution.
Davison, Challenges of Command, 61. He applied for six months leave, granted on 5
November 1891, several months after leaving Goldfinch at Noumea, New Caledonia, 22°S
167°W – a desolate island at the time, but possibly the only convenient place for him to land,
TNA, ADM 53/13772; note from Shipping Illustrated, “Retired from Goldfinch in 1891 and
travelled for a period, visiting Honolulu, some of the western states, and reaching Toronto in
1892,” Kingsmill Papers, Brechin, Ontario; “ granted six months leave to remain in Canada
& arrived in England 17 Jan 1892,” TNA, ADM 196/38.
Possibly because Charles’ cousin Walter Kingsmill provided certain legal services to the
family. He was legal guardian to two boys in the family, who were apparently “of unsound
mind”, Ontario Legislative Assembly, Bills 1916, 2nd Session, 14th Legislature, vol. 1, no.191 (information from Ms Patti Kingsmill). Walter Dowker Beardmore of Toronto(1849
-1915) was the son of George Lissant Beardmore, who had prospered from his tanneries in
Acton, and later in Bracebridge, Ontario, “The Beardmore One-Name Study” registered with
the Guild of name studies, member no.222. Walter Beardmore was himself a highly
successful business man, prominent in Toronto society, Morgan, Canadian Men and Women
of the Time(1912); Constance’s maternal grandfather was James Miller Williams, the man
who first discovered oil in Sarnia, Ontario, Gary May, “Ontario’s Living Dinosaur,” The
Beaver vol.88, no 3 (June-July 2008), 34-39.
50
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
minister of Canada from 1896 to 1911. 37 Constance Beardmore and Charles Kingsmill,
subsequent events suggest, may have come to an arrangement at this time that led to a
most advantageous marriage some years later.
When Kingsmill returned to Britain in 1892 he reached a turning point in his
career that more or less coincided with a turning point in the role of imperial defence in
British naval policy. Donald Schurman, in his study of imperial defence from 1868-1887,
points out that “The idea that Britain’s defence was inextricably bound up with imperial
defence as a whole was made clear in those early years, through reference to what later
became only one part of the recognized requirements of a complete system of imperial
defence.”38
Providentially, these had been the formative years in Kingsmill’s professional
life. It was a period when interdepartmental co-operation between the army and the navy
had begun to take shape, at the instigation of the War Office. By the time Kingsmill
began the transition from gunboats to capital ships in 1892, although the two services
remained entities unto themselves, the process of growing interdependence had been at
work for a decade or more. Consequently it was The Naval Defence Act of 1889,
marking response to perceived British naval weakness, 39 that created the framework in
which his career now progressed. He attended Greenwich Naval College in 1892, 40 was
appointed to HMS Victory for the dockyard reserve in November 1892, and spent a year
there until appointed in October 1893 as commander (i.e. second in command) of the
37
38
39
40
“Mr. Kingsmill was a keen imperialist and, up to the time of his death, interested himself in
Militia matters, serving on the frontier in 1866 on Col. Lowrie’s staff at the time of the
Fenian raid. Later in life he held a commission with the 10 th Royals, retiring with the rank of
Captain ... “Such men as Mr Kingsmill and those of his class, of unblemished reputation and
with high ideals of right and wrong, bring honour to our profession, and stand out as models
for imitation by all who come after them; and, when they pass away, it may well be said of
them that they have not lived in vain,” Henry O’Brien, K.C., “In Remembrance of the late
Nicol Kingsmill, K.C.,” Canada Law Journal, 1 October 1912, copy in possession of
Michael Kingsmill, Brechin, Ont.
Schurman, Imperial Defence, 152, 157. Political and military planners had been reacting to
“the problem involved in the defence of a vast, mutually dependent, oceanic empire during a
time of extensive naval technological change and comparatively slight international tension.”
“Although the government had been reluctant to admit any naval deficiency hitherto, it had
to reverse its attitude and, as with the Liberals in 1884, trim its sails to meet the breeze. Lord
Salisbury, as he sadly admitted at the Guildhall in November, found himself compelled to
enter England in the naval armaments race. In March 1889 the Naval Defence Act was
introduced into Parliament. It provided for eight first-class battleships larger than any
previously built – the Royal Sovereign class, the standard type of English battleship for ten
years; 2 second-class battleships, 9 large and 29 smaller cruisers, 4 fast gunboats, and 18
torpedo-gunboats at a cost of £21,500,000...,” Arthur Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea
Power (London: Frank Cass, 1964), 143.
From February until September 1892 he was on half pay, but probably spent his time in
private study at Greenwich until appointed to President for the naval college, TNA, ADM
196/38.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
51
armoured Orlando class cruiser HMS Immortalité of the Channel Squadron. Six months
later the ship’s officers transferred to the newly commissioned Blake class protected
cruiser HMS Blenheim.41 It was while Kingsmill was serving in Blenheim that Canada’s
prime minister, Sir John Thompson, died during a visit to Windsor Castle in December
1894. The Admiralty recalled the ship from Gibraltar in order to convey Sir John
Thompson’s remains to Halifax. 42
In September of the following year Kingsmill was appointed in command of
Illustration 2: HMS Blenheim, from a painting by W. Fred Mitchell. (Charles Rathbone Low,
Her Majesty’s Navy, Vol. III, London, J. S. Virtue & Co., Limited, 1892.) Naval Marine
Archive.
41
42
The Blake Class was an improvement on the Orlando Class, at a time of rapidly developing
designs, between 1885 and 1899, Jane’s Fighting Ships; “Blenheim... twin screw cruiser 1st
class, 9000 tons”, with officers turned over from Immortalité, commissioned Chatham 26
May 94, Channel Squadron detached on special service,” TNA, ADM 196/38.
Peter Waite, The Man from Halifax (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 427-431.
This was the first of three occasions that the ship carried out such services: “Blenheim
served in the repatriation of the remains of three dignitaries during her career: His Royal
Highness Prince Henry of Battenberg died from malaria while on active duty onboard HMS
Blonde off Sierra Leone in 1896. Blenheim repatriated his body from the Canary Islands. Her
Majesty Queen Victoria appointed the commanding officer Captain Edmund S. Poe to the
fourth class of the Royal Victorian Order as a mark of appreciation for this service. Sitting
Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Thompson died in England, just after being named to HM
Queen Victoria’s Privy Council in 1894 and was repatriated to Halifax, Nova Scotia by
Blenheim... Former Canadian Prime Minister Sir Charles Tupper died in England in 1915 and
was repatriated to Halifax by Blenheim” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Blen
heim_(1890).
52
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
HMS Archer, a torpedo cruiser stationed at Hong Kong. 43 His service in Archer, although
it coincided with growing tensions in China, 44 was nevertheless uneventful. It concluded
in November 1898 after a series of satisfactory inspections and recommendations for
promotion. Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Seymour, the new commander of the China
Station, commented in particular that Kingsmill was a good seaman, and on 31 December
1898, with his return to England, he was promoted Captain. 45
For the best part of the next two years, partly on half pay and partly on various
technical and professional courses, he remained ashore, until in September 1900 he was
appointed in command of the Pearl class cruiser HMS Mildura, one of five acquired and
paid for by Australia under the terms of the Imperial Defence Act of 1887. This reflects a
certain pattern of employment. All his seagoing appointments until 1892 had been to
ships east of Suez, and two of them – Cormorant and Goldfinch – had been among those
serving in the imperial squadrons stationed in or near Australian waters. HMS Archer,
although part of the China squadron, had given him increased familiarity with the region.
He joined Mildura, a 3rd class cruiser launched in 1889 as HMS Pelorus, and renamed in
February 1890 for her first commission in the newly established Australian squadron. 46
Kingsmill took up the appointment on his arrival in December 1900, having
travelled by way of Toronto, where he married Constance Beardmore, who accompanied
him to Australia.47 After an apparently uneventful commission he was recalled to
England in November 1903, assuming command of HMS Scylla48 for the voyage from
43
44
45
46
47
48
One of eight 3rd class protected cruisers laid down between 1885 and 1888, Jane’s Fighting
Ships.
In 1897 after a humiliating defeat by Japan, “Poor China...soon found out she had only been
delivered from the hands of a single robber to fall into the hands of three bandits ... [Russia,
Germany and France],” Bacon, Earl Jellicoe, 74-5. See also Marder, The Anatomy of British
Sea Power, chapter14.
TNA, ADM 196/38
Colin Jones, Australian Colonial Navies (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1986), 116128; 159
Toronto Mail and Empire, 12 October 1900, 1 November 1900. See also St. George the
Martyr, marriage register. The marriage, according to the newspaper announcement, took
place at St. Andrews. Although not recorded in the St. Andrew by the Lake parish register, it
is possible the ceremony may have taken place at this small church on Toronto Island, but
been recorded by the priest in the register for his home parish, St. George the Martyr.
Charles had been in New York in February 1900, during one of his periods on half pay,
possibly staying with his sister Mrs J. Gault, and it seems very likely that he had been in
touch with Constance Beardmore in Toronto to discuss marriage plans. Five days after
Charles Kingsmill had sailed back to England, his father came to New York on his way to
stay with two other daughters, Mrs Chester Glass and Mrs Langdon Wilks, in the
Mediterranean, but died on passage. It is his obituary, which appeared in the New York
Times, 27 February 1900, that reveals Charles’ presence in New York.
An Apollo class second-class cruiser, built between 1889 and 1891. Kingsmill commanded
her from 8 December 1903 to 16 February 1904. It was six years later that Kingsmill would
advise the Canadian government to acquire Rainbow, an Apollo class cruiser of the same
A bloody war and a sickly season.
53
Australia. He then attended the signals, fleet tactics, and war courses in England in
preparation for his January 1905 appointment in command of HMS Majestic, a preDreadnought battleship, lead ship of the Majestic class, first commissioned in 1895, and
assigned to the Atlantic fleet in 1905. For a colonial in the Royal Navy this appointment
reflected significant approval of his merits by a Naval Board which, headed by Admiral
of the Fleet Lord Fisher, was embarking on a revolutionary course of scrapping obsolete
and small vessels, and building up a fleet of large ships in home waters.
Circumstance and character appear at this moment to have favoured the fortunes
of Captain Kingsmill.49 When the newly commissioned King Edward VII class of predreadnought battleships came into service, all except the lead ship named after regions of
the British Empire, Kingsmill would be given command of the ship named for Canada,
HMS Dominion.50 He joined on 28 March 1906, and that summer embarked on a flag
waving cruise. At Quebec City, in August the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the
Empire presented the ship with a magnificent collection of silver plate. 51 There
Kingsmill met Sir Wilfrid Laurier,52 at a time when the idea of a Canadian naval service,
based on the patrol vessels of the Fisheries Protection Service, was gathering
momentum.53 Laurier, who knew the family, and was aware that Charles’ uncle Nicol
had a prominent role in the Toronto branch of the Canadian Navy League, took an
immediate liking to Charles Kingsmill, 54 whose fortunes appeared to be in the ascendant,
and so might they have been had he not blotted his copybook, on the way to Quebec, by
putting his ship aground in Chaleur Bay.
Kingsmill had left the bridge when it appeared the ship was on a safe course to
49
50
51
52
53
54
vintage.
Constance Kingsmill, on this and future occasions, would appear not to have been backward
in complementing the good impressions her husband was making on the great and famous.
Kingsmill Papers, Brechin.
The others were all named after parts of the British Empire: Commonwealth, Dominion,
Hindustan, New Zealand, Hibernia, Africa and Britannia, see Fred T. Jane, ed., Jane’s
Fighting Ships (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1906), 44. So far as I can determine, no
other “colonials” were placed in command of these ships. In January 1906 Dominion, under
the command of Captain John Marx, RN, had carried the remains of The Hon. Raymond
Préfontaine, minister of marine and fisheries, after his sudden death in Paris, from Cherbourg
to Halifax. When Captain Marx was promoted to rear-admiral on 6 March 1906 Kingsmill,
no doubt in view of his Canadian interests, was selected to replace him.
This presentation was an expression of gratitude to HMS Dominion for returning the remains
of Raymond Préfontaine to Canada in January 1906. See the Toronto Globe, 23 January
1906; Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 105-6. The collection of silver plate is now in
the possession of the wardroom, HMCS Naden, at Esquimalt.
Laurier loaned several books of photographs to Mrs Kingsmill, accepted an invitation to dine
on board, and was present for the presentation of silver plate by the Imperial Order of the
Daughters of the Empire, Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 105-6.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 98-105.
O’Brien, “In Remembrance of the late Nicol Kingsmill, K.C.”; Gimblett “Admiral Sir
Charles E. Kingsmill: Forgotten Father.”
54
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
clear the land in fine weather conditions, but the navigating officer mistook a forest fire
ashore for a navigational light and fixed the position of the ship well clear of the land,
when the tide and current were in fact setting the ship close inshore. Assured by
messages from the bridge that the ship was on course, he captain was still at dinner when
he felt the ship’s movements as she touched ground. One can imagine his state of mind,
and sympathise with the decisions he subsequently made. 55
Dominion completed her schedule in Quebec before returning to England, after a
visit to Bermuda dockyard for temporary repairs, and in March 1907 the captain,
navigating officer and officer of the watch were brought before a court martial. As was to
be expected the court, after acquitting the officer of the watch, found that the captain and
navigating officer “did by default suffer His Majesty’s Ship ‘Dominion’ to be stranded.”56
That being said, no seaman can read the proceedings of this trial without compassion, nor
without a measure of respect for the cool professionalism of Kingsmill and his ship’s
company, in the circumstances: 57
The action of the Navigating Officer and the Officer of the Watch in putting the helm
hard-a-port just before the ship took ground, caused her to slew to starboard to the
Southward after touching. Boats were immediately lowered and soundings taken
round the ship, the deepest water being off the starboard bow, and I steamed the ship
off by going ahead as the tide rose. The boom boats were hoisted out to lighten the
ship and to lay out anchors, if required, but this was not found necessary. The work
ordered was carried out smartly by Officers and Ship’s Company, and in a quiet and
orderly manner. The work in the Engine Room Department was also particularly
satisfactory. The ship was examined below and sounded, the only leak through the
inner bottom shewed in the foremost stokehold where the oil fuel, which is stowed in
the double bottoms, was forced up. The fires in this stokehold were drawn quietly to
avoid any chance of accident. The Ship was then anchored for the night in 9 ½
fathoms.58
Kingsmill received a severe reprimand, but remained in command of Dominion,
55
56
57
58
Robert L. Davison, “A Most Fortunate Court Martial: The Trial of Captain Charles
Kingsmill, 1907,” The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord vol. XIX (January 2009), 56-87.
TNA, ADM 1/7954, “Minutes of Proceedings of a Court Martial Held on H.M. Ship
Acheron, 4-5 March 1907,” pp. 127-129.
The writer, as a former Navigating Officer, recalls various unsettling incidents and sleepless
nights when being prepared for the Long “N” course, and frequently required to conduct
pilotage in dangerous waters, by a captain who had been the navigating officer of a ship,
during the Second World War, which ended up on the rocks of Videy Island, in Reykjavik,
Iceland, during a winter gale. On that occasion the navigating officer’s advice not to anchor
had been ignored, so that he was not court martialled: an example no doubt to be followed, if
necessity demanded, which fortunately it never did, by his protégé!
TNA, ADM 1/7954. The sentence was too lenient in the opinion of the Board of Admiralty:
“I concur in findings of ct martial [wrote the fourth sea lord] but I consider that both Captain
and Lieut N both [should?] have been dismissed from HMS Dominion. ” Fisher minuted:
“Fully concur with the 4th Sea Lord.” It is more than likely that Kingsmill had friends in
court!
A bloody war and a sickly season.
55
while the ship was undergoing repairs in Portsmouth, until 1 May 1907, when he went to
Plymouth in command of the Royal Sovereign class battleship HMS Repulse, lying in
Devonport with a nucleus crew as part of the reserve fleet.
To leave the recently commissioned Dominion for a somewhat older preDreadnought, in reserve, at the height of his career did not bode well for his future in the
RN. It is interesting, however, that despite the opinion of Jacky Fisher and members of
his board that Kingsmill should have been dismissed his ship, the Admiralty kept him on
full pay, and that his new command was not without importance. Repulse, although in
reserve, belonged to a division of special service ships in Devonport which, like similar
divisions at Portsmouth and Chatham, were created as part of the First Sea Lord’s
preparation for war. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher reminded the world in 1920 of his
thinking in 1907:
The keystone of our preparedness for war has now to be inserted, namely, the
provision of efficient nucleus crews.
This can be done to-morrow
A nucleus crew should consist of approximately two-fifths of her engine-room
complement, the whole of her turret crews, gun layers and sight-setters for all guns,
all important special ratings, and two-fifths of her normal crew, her captain, and all
important officers.59
One did not arouse Fisher’s disapproval without contemplating unfortunate
consequences. However one regards it, the appointment to Repulse was not exactly a
guarantee of continued favour. And even if Kingsmill went on to have favourable career
prospects in the Royal Navy, his previous meetings with Prime Minister Laurier, and the
family connections that reflected ties with the Liberal party in Canada, evidently gave a
Canadian appointment added attraction. When Laurier and his new minister of marine
and fisheries, Louis-Philippe Brodeur, arrived in England for the Colonial Conference of
1907, Kingsmill requested an interview with Laurier to assure him he was still in good
standing with the Royal Navy. Laurier invited Captain and Mrs Kingsmill to dinner, and
although we do not know what was said on that occasion, Kingsmill was clearly in good
standing with the Canadian government. Nobody of comparable ability and experience,
with such strong ties to Canada, was available to transform the Fisheries Protection
Service into a naval force. One year later, on 1 May 1908, Governor-General the Earl
59
“Nucleus Crews. Two-yearly commissions to be instituted, and with no material change of
officers and men during the two years. All the fighting vessels in Reserve to have an
efficient nucleus crew of approximately two-fifths of the full crew, together with all the
important Gunnery ratings as well as the Captain of the ship and the principal Officers. The
periodical exercise and inspection of the ships by the responsible Flag Officer who will take
them to the war. This Flag Officer will suffer for any want of efficiency and preparation for
war of these vessels. These vessels to be collected in squadrons at Portsmouth, Plymouth
and Chatham, according to the Station to which they are going as reinforcements.” Lord
Fisher, Memories and Records, Volume II, Records (New York, George H. Doran Co., 1920),
145-6. See also Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution, 158-161 for the failure of so
many contemporary observers, army and navy, to understand the logic behind nucleus crews.
56
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
Illustration 3: Rear Admiral Kingsmill, circa 1910.
Grey informed Lord Tweedmouth, the first lord of the admiralty, that the Canadian
government wanted Kingsmill to take charge of the Canadian Marine Service. Eleven
days after that, on 12 May 1908, Kingsmill received a promotion to rear-admiral and left
Repulse for his new command in Canada.60
This sequence of events suggests that at least as early as 1906, possibly even
earlier, recalling his visit to Toronto in 1892, the advocates for a Canadian naval service
60
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 124, citing Grey to Laurier 1 May 1908, Ottawa,
Library and Archives Canada (hereafter, LAC), Wilfrid Laurier papers, MG 27 II B2, 3-291,
866.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
57
had been promoting him as a logical
choice to organize and command the
service, that the Admiralty supported the
choice, and by no means least because
Constance Kingsmill was working on
both her husband and family
connections in Ottawa, to influence their
decisions. A series of cables and letters
in the Kingsmill papers, dated from 8 to
20 May 1908,61 confirm what a strong
connection there was between the
Kingsmill family and the Liberal
administration in Ottawa. On 8 May the
minister of marine and fisheries wrote a
personal letter, welcoming Kingsmill to
the fold, observing:
for a long time I have cherished
the hope of seeing a Canadian,
possessing
the
necessary
qualifications, acquired in the
English Navy, take the command
of our little Canadian fleet. I had
Illustration 4: Admiral Kingsmill with his sons
naturally cast my eye on you in
Walter Juchereau and Charles Grange (always
Quebec two years ago. Mrs
known as Grange) in Ottawa, c. 1910-14.
Kingsmill, whom I had the
pleasure of meeting at my house,
one day gave me to understand that you would probably return to Canada, but I
thought that was only the natural hope of a wife separated from her husband most of
the time, and anxious to see him return home.
Constance Kingsmill’s father, Walter Beardmore, was among the first to be told
that the Canadian offer had been accepted. Brodeur’s letter of 8 May to Kingsmill spells
out the general scope of duties and responsibilities that he would be expected to assume.
Referring to “an indiscretion which I have not been able to trace,” he noted that the
newspapers had learned of the appointment, one of “great public interest, and I am very
glad of it.” A few days later, on 14 May, Brodeur informed Mr Beardmore that “the
Admiralty have recommended the appointment of Captain Kingsmill to the position of
Commander of the Marine Service” and on 15 May Beardmore wrote to “My dear
Charlie” enclosing the Brodeur letter, which included the paragraph: “As soon as Captain
Kingsmill arrives in Toronto if I have not officially notified him before that, I shall expect
him to proceed to Ottawa immediately. He will have a hard task on arriving here,
because he will be called upon to organize our fleet for the Tercentenary Celebration in
61
L.P. Brodeur to C.E. Kingsmill, 8 May 1908; L.P. Brodeur to W.D. Beardmore, 14 May 1908
“private”; W.D. Beardmore to Kingsmill 15 May 1908; L.P. Brodeur to Kingsmill, telegram,
20 May 1908, Kingsmill papers, Brechin, Ontario.
58
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
Quebec.” Finally, on 20 May, Brodeur made everything official with his cable of
congratulations for the promotion to rear-admiral, and stating “I am authorised by
Governor in Council to offer you command of Canadian marine service.” 62
Kingsmill’s subsequent career, summarised at the beginning of this paper, failed
to fulfil the hopes that Laurier and Brodeur had given him. It was embarrassing to both
Laurier and Kingsmill that on 30 July 1911 Niobe went aground during a summer cruise
that was supposed to advertise, while the election campaign of that year was under way,
the naval program envisaged by Laurier. The Conservative administration that came to
power under Sir Robert Borden after the election was based on an alliance of disparate
political groupings. “Having played partisan politics with the Canadian navy,” observes
the official history, “ using both ends of the naval debate to undermine Laurier in order to
help win the election, Robert Borden arrived in office with no coherent naval policy of
his own.”63 After the Senate defeated a House of Commons motion to repeal the Naval
Service Act and replace it with the Naval Aid Bill, to finance new construction for the
Royal Navy, Borden asked Kingsmill for suggestions. Kingsmill who, ironically, had
been promoted vice-admiral on the RN’s retired list on 17 May, observed “I have found it
difficult, if not impossible, to prepare a memorandum on the subject.” He argued in line
with earlier Admiralty advice, for a modest force of torpedo boat and submarine flotillas,
but the Admiralty under Winston Churchill reversed itself. The official history provides
an accurate picture of the situation:
As the European powers drifted toward war in the summer of 1914, the Canadian
naval service was largely incapable of acting as an “integral part of an imperial
navy.” The whole RCN consisted of fewer than 350 officers and ratings...While the
differing naval policies of Laurier and Borden pointed to the philosophical distinction
between their views of Canadian national development ... the basic question behind
Canadian naval policy remained unanswered. Under Borden’s leadership, Canada
would enter the First World War having neither contributed dreadnoughts to an
imperial fleet nor formed a proper naval service of her own.64
Over the next four years Kingsmill worked under enormous difficulties. He
managed to keep a cool head, and improvised a totally inadequate force of vessels to
meet the requirements of war. Niobe and Rainbow were placed under direct Admiralty
control. As war broke out in Europe and the German light cruiser Leipzig posed a threat
to the west coast, the Admiralty ordered Rainbow to “generally guard the trade routes
north of the equator,” an extraordinary idea for a cruiser with no modern ammunition and
a wireless set whose range limited the ship to the vicinity of the Juan de Fuca Strait.
62
63
64
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 124 cites a lack of documentary evidence concerning
Kingsmill’s appointment, but the preceding source material helps to fill that gap.
Ibid., 185-7. It should be noted that Borden had initially supported Laurier’s concept for a
Canadian naval force, ibid., 131-3. As Roger Sarty and Michael Hadley point out, Borden
never did “waver from his long-standing conviction that gradual development of a smallwarship Canadian force was the only ‘permanent policy’ that could win widespread and
enduring domestic support.” Hadley and Sarty, Tin Pots, 61.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 210.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
59
Kingsmill’s assessment of the risk led him to requisition the Grand Trunk steamship
Prince George as a hospital ship,65 no doubt less than hopeful about the results of a
successful interception of the Leipzig. In the event, Leipzig departed the neighbourhood
on the way to her eventual destruction at the Battle of the Falklands in December, 1914,
and British naval reinforcements arrived on the west coast of Canada without further
incident.66 Niobe on the east coast completed a long delayed completion of repairs to the
damage suffered from her grounding in 1911, carried out various tasks under British
Admiralty control until, worn out and unseaworthy, she reverted in September 1915 to
RCN control, as a depot ship in Halifax.67
The official history sums up the problems Kingsmill now faced, in one
paragraph:
Kingsmill would have little reason to alter his lament at the meagre resources with
which the Royal Canadian Navy was being asked to undertake the nation’s maritime
defence. Despite Canada’s willingness to recruit and maintain a four-division
Canadian Corps on the battlefields of France and Belgium – one that would
eventually gain a well-deserved reputation as one of the shock formations of the
British Empire – the Borden government would never, in fact, provide the Canadian
navy with the resources it needed “to carry out its responsibilities” to defend
Canada’s coastal waters during the First World War. With most of the government’s
wartime decisions on naval defence reflecting the inconsistent advice and empty
promises Ottawa received from the British Admiralty in London, the remnants of
Laurier’s fledgling naval service would have to guard Canada’s maritime interests
with essentially the same motley collection of seconded civilian vessels that a
dubious Kingsmill was forced to contemplate when he drew up a Canadian war
plan...68
Canadian scholarship over the past twenty-five years has documented how
Kingsmill and his minuscule staff in Ottawa struggled to provide adequate naval defences
against ill-defined threats, mostly possible German submarine operations in the western
Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Every effort to construct purpose built destroyers
and submarines met stubborn resistance from a government informed by conflicting
65
66
67
68
“The nursing sisters appointed to the naval service on the Prince George were Elizabeth
Pierce, Anne Dover, Gertrude Black, Penelope Mellen, Mabel Lindsey and Bessie Watson.
The nurses were paid approximately $90 per month. Their ship probably had the shortest life
of any commissioned vessel in the RCN. Prince George was built in 1910. It was a 307 foot
long steel vessel with twin screws, and weighed 3,372 tons”; John Webber, “First Aid:
Nurses in the RCN, WWI”, Canadian Forces base, Esquimalt, Naval and Military Museum,
“Unsung Women”. See also LAC, RG 24, vol. 882A, file HQ 51-212-16-3. This is a Militia
and Defence file that suggests but does not state concern over the failure of the Department
of the Naval Service to keep army authorities informed of affairs in Military District 11
(British Columbia). The ship served as a hospital ship from 12 August to no later than 9
September, when Dr. Stuart Tiley reported to the governor general that the ship had paid off.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 254-256.
Ibid; Hadley and Sarty, Tin Pots, 126-7.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 215.
60
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
advice from the Admiralty.69
They had also to oversee the shipment of vital war supplies across the Atlantic,
done with the indispensable help of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and made
arrangements to send Canadian volunteers for service with the RN and the Royal Naval
Air Service, arrangements that left the RCN critically short of personnel when in 1917-18
German submarine operations placed shipping on western Atlantic sea lanes in danger. 70
After vexatious negotiations with the Admiralty over the handling of telegraph
communications, Kingsmill found ways to get vital traffic to Ottawa, and kept himself
fully informed of RCN operations. Indeed, it has been suggested that he had a clearer
view of convoy and escort deployments, when U-boat operations presented serious
threats in 1917-18, than Captain Hose, captain of patrols in Halifax. 71
The Halifax explosion of 6 December 1917 added to the difficulties Kingsmill
had to deal with. Although he knew that the main culprits in this disaster were the
Admiralty’s shipping agents in New York who were loading merchant ships with
dangerous combinations of explosives and flammables, “to the naval director’s credit he
kept his silence...and refused to point the finger of blame in the Admiralty’s direction.” 72
And by war’s end the shipping losses off the eastern seaboard, although very damaging to
fishing fleets, remained negligible in defended convoys. 73
Canadian and British naval authorities responded to the submarine threat by
combining Canadian and United States naval and air forces assigned to the protection of
shipping on the eastern seaboard. In April 1918 the commandant of the First Naval
District in Boston and Kingsmill agreed on the allocation of responsibility to the USN as
far east as Lockeport Nova Scotia “including the outer part of the Bay of Fundy,”
following which the USN took over the government wharf at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, as
a base of operations. Aerial patrols, proposed as early as February 1917 and rejected at
69
70
71
72
73
Ibid., 361; Gimblett, “Forgotten Admiral”; Hadley and Sarty, Tin Pots, 123-5.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 375-383, 355, 622-630; S.F. Wise, Canadian Airmen
and the First World War: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Volume I
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press in cooperation with the Department of National
Defence, 1980), 603-608.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 443-4; William Johnston to Alec Douglas, 23 August
2013.
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 505-532. “The views expressed by the Ottawa Evening
Journal’s editorial writers the ‘the Canadian Naval Service...fell down’ and had ‘received a
black eye’ for its administration of Halifax Harbour were typical of the attitude held by many
Canadians toward the fledgling RCN...This was especially true of Halifax, where the upstart
RCN was often viewed as a contemptible usurper of the British navy’s long-established role
in the port...,” ibid, 532. For a full account, including important material on Kingsmill’s role,
see John Griffith Armstrong, The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy: Inquiry
and Intrigue (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002).
Hadley and Sarty, Tin Pots, 200-203, 239-262, 278, 296-7. Hadley and Sarty quote Admiral
Sir Herbert Richmond’s minute of 22 November 1918: “There appear to be strong party
differences of opinion on the Navy question in Canada and in consequence whole-hearted
support for the Naval Administration is not available.”
A bloody war and a sickly season.
61
that time by the Cabinet as too expensive, would have to be conducted by the USN from
Halifax and Sydney until the Canadian Naval Air Service could be formed. In August
1918 Lieutenant Richard E. Byrd arrived in Halifax as “Officer-in-Charge, US Naval Air
Forces in Canada.” By the end of November this cordial period of joint operations
concluded with Kingsmill’s visit to Halifax and his farewell meeting with Lieutenant
Byrd, who thanked him “for the dandy time you showed us on the yacht,” and offered to
help “should you continue your Naval
Aviation as a peace time affair.”74
Promoted admiral on the Royal
Navy’s retired list on 3 April 1917,
Kingsmill received several other marks
of recognition for his war services. His
efforts
to
support
submarine
construction at Montreal’s Vickers
shipyards in 1915, and the provision of
escorts to sail them to England; the
praise of Vice-Admiral Sir George
Patey, C-in-C North America and West
Indies Squadron for “readiness to give
every assistance in his power” in 1916;
the attention drawn by the Dominion
government in November 1917 for the
“services given by him and his staff
during the war,”, were all brought to the
notice of the Admiralty.
He was
knighted by the King by letters patent
on 6 February 1918.75
In February 1919 Kingsmill,
Georges Desbarats, (the deputy minister
of the Department of the Naval Service)
and Commodore Walter Hose76 formed
74
75
76
Illustration 5: Admiral Charles Kingsmill “and
friend.” (Courtesy the Kingsmill family.)
Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast, 571-2, 626-7; Roger Sarty, “The Origins of Canada-US
Defence Cooperation: The Naval Defence of the Northwest Atlantic, 1914-18,” in Briton C.
Busch, ed., Canada and the great War: Western Front Association Papers (Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 131-43; Wise, Canadian Airmen and the
First World War, 603-608; Byrd to Kingsmill, 30 November 1918, Kingsmill Papers,
Phillipsville. Byrd of course went on to earn fame as a polar explorer.
TNA, ADM 196/38, p.755.
Commodore Walter Hose had been appointed captain of patrols in August 1917, the first
RCN officer to hold the appointment, in place of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Coke, RN (who
had taken the appointment as a commodore RNR (retired) ) and in spite of the RN proposal
to appoint another British officer as his replacement. Kingsmill persuaded the naval
minister, C.C. Ballantyne, that the Admiralty could not appoint anyone to HMCS Niobe
additional for charge of patrols because Niobe, now serving as a depot ship in Halifax, was
62
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord
Illustration 6: Admiral Charles Kingsmill with his daughter Diana. (Courtesy the Kingsmill
family.)
a naval committee to prepare recommendations for the future of the RCN. Under their
direction the naval staff drew up thirty-six “occasional papers,” partly based on the
deliberations of an imperial war conference of 30 March 1917 requesting the Admiralty to
“consider the most effective scheme of naval defence for the empire’s security,” but clearly
influenced by the dominion prime minister’s position that “proposals ... for a single navy ...
under a central naval authority are not considered practicable.” 77 The so-called Jellicoe
Mission, in which Admiral of the Fleet the 1st Earl Jellicoe visited the dominions and India,
resulted in a report that recommended fairly modest expansion of the RCN, and a
subsequent Cabinet recommendation in 1920 agreed on a reduced version of that proposal.
When the Union caucus rejected the naval plan Borden, who at first proposed dismissing
Kingsmill and most of the officials in the department, accepted Sir George Foster’s advice
for a compromise, deferring permanent navy policy for the time being, and to “carry on the
Canadian Naval Service along pre-war lines.”78 On the day Borden made that decision, 15
77
78
under complete Canadian control. In 1920 Hose would come to Ottawa as acting director of
the naval service and naval assistant to the minister, Johnston et al., The Seabound Coast,
446-51,742-3.
Borden to Sir Eric Geddes (first lord of the admiralty), 15 August 1918, enclosure,
Memorandum of the “Dominion Ministers,” in A. Temple Patterson, ed., The Jellicoe
Papers..., Volume II: 1916-1935 (London: Naval Records Society, 1968), 286-7.
Foster to Borden, 25 March 1920, cited in James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada: From the
Great War to the Great Depression (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 164. Foster
at that time was minister of trade and commerce, and a trusted adviser of Borden.
A bloody war and a sickly season.
63
March 1920, Kingsmill submitted his resignation, with effect on 31 December 1920.79
When Charles Kingsmill accepted Prime Minister Laurier’s invitation to
transform Canada’s marine and fisheries department into a naval service, there was no
immediate threat of war. When war did come, the direction he received, both from the
Admiralty and his own government, was literally to make bricks without straw. 80 In the
end, he did just that. And as the official history has observed, he may have suffered
terrible disappointments before and after retirement, but he seems to have held no
grievances. Sir Robert Borden recalled that in the summer of 1920 he visited Kingsmill
at his retirement home on Grindstone Island and considered it one of several “delightful
visits with friends.”81 No doubt Sir Charles’ grandfather, Colonel William Kingsmill,
would have approved.
79
80
81
He resigned without regret, except for one thing: “This will about finish up anything I can do
for the College. It is the only part of the Naval Service that I regret ceasing to have anything
to do with.” Kingsmill to Commander E.A. Nixon, Commandant of the Royal Naval College
of Canada, 7 April 1920, Commander E.A.E. Nixon Papers, DHH 74/689, folder C “19201921,” file 50.
“And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people,
saying, fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was straw...” Exodus 5, 13.
Johnston, et al., The Seabound Coast, 742, citing Henry Borden, ed., Robert Laird Borden:
His Memoirs (Toronto, 1938) II, 1042
64
The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord